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Annan wants big reform on force, poverty, rights
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Annan wants big reform on force, poverty, rights
Secretary-General Kofi Annan advocated on Sunday new rules for military intervention, radically changing a key human rights body and adopting an anti-terrorism treaty against Palestinian suicide bombers.
In a 63-page report on UN reform, Annan also called on nations at a planned UN summit in September to agree on a timetable to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national income to combat poverty by 2015.
And he endorsed a British-proposed international lending facility to kick-start development. ?We will not enjoy development without security; we will not enjoy security without development, and we will not enjoy either without respect for human rights,? Annan said.
The report, months in the making, draws on recommendations from high-level panels on security and poverty. It seeks to keep the world body the center of multilateral action following the controversy of the US-led invasion of Iraq, probes of the scandal-tainted oil-for-food program for Iraq and sexual abuse by peacekeepers.
Mark Malloch Brown, Annan?s chief of staff, told a news conference the secretary-general refused to ?be distracted? by whatever revelations may still emerge on the oil-for-food investigation. ?I think there is a lot of support for him and it is time for a bold and practical deal of this kind.? Among the more controversial proposals is to abolish the much-criticized Geneva-based 53-member Human Rights Commission, accused of ignoring major abuses.
This body, he said, should be replaced by a smaller Human Rights Council, whose members would be elected by a two-thirds vote of the 191-member General Assembly rather than by regional groups that have led to seats for such countries as Sudan, Libya and Zimbabwe and Nepal. ?Too many members of the commission, Annan said, protected themselves against criticism? or declined ?to criticize others.? He said the commission had been ?undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism.? But such action would still have to be approved by the General Assembly.
<B> Evelyn LEOPOLD</B>
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